


as long as i can hold your hand

by jehans



Series: it's for you [10]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-25 20:12:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehans/pseuds/jehans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU. Courfeyrac attends a funeral, Jehan is a light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	as long as i can hold your hand

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for grief, funerals, and slurs.

_I miss you._

It’s already past 1am for you, and it’s an hour later for him, so you don’t really expect a reply until morning. But you miss him and you need him to know. Your heart beats a little faster when your phone buzzes and lights up only a few moments later.

_I miss you, too! :(_

He’s awake! Or you woke him up. Either way, he’s responding. You need him, now. After a long day of family and black clothes and your mom crying and trying not to cry yourself until you reached the bathroom, you’re not emotionally stable enough to sugarcoat your conversations. And he wouldn’t want you to, anyway. You just need him.

_I just want to hold you._

Another quick reply.

_When are you coming home?_

You screw up your face at that. You want so badly to be home with him.

_Not for at least a week. Funeral’s Thursday. And then I can’t really leave my mom right after._

They’re about to bury her mother, after all. Her only son can’t go jetting off right after that into the arms of his boyfriend. She needs you.

_I wish I was there. I should be there to hold your hand at the funeral._

It makes you cry. You’re alone in your old room and safe, so you just let it. You’re about to try to compose some answer to make him feel less guilty about not being here when he sends you another text.

_I’m going to get a flight over there tomorrow, okay?_

It’s like your heart just soars. He’s coming? But no, he can’t.

_But you have that exam._

His next reply makes you cry harder.

_Fuck the exam. You’re my boyfriend. I’ll talk to my professor, she’s really nice, she’ll let me make it up for a family emergency like this. You’re my family you count._

You can imagine him, waiting outside her office until she arrives for her office hours. _My boyfriend’s grandmother just died unexpectedly, I need to go be with him for the funeral._ He wouldn’t take no for an answer.

He was coming.

You’re overwhelmed and crying harder than ever. You can’t think of what to say besides the obvious.

So you say the obvious.

_I love you so much._

 

As you stand and wait for him by his gate, you can’t help but think once again how amazing your family can be, how grateful you are that they never cared whether you liked girls or boys — or both, as in your case. Your sister drove you here to pick up your boyfriend, she’s standing a little way away from you to give you room to greet him when he gets off the plane. Your mother is back at home, setting up a place for him in your room. You still can’t go home with him to his parents, but your mom is making room for him to sleep in your bed. You couldn’t be more grateful to her right now.

When you see him — with his hair all a mess from traveling and dark circles deep under his beautiful eyes — you immediately start to cry again. He actually drops his carry-on as he rushes toward you, leaving it lying on the ground a few steps behind him as he gathers you into his arms. He’s smaller than you, and you collapse into him, sobbing into his neck. You don’t care that your sister is watching.

He strokes your hair and whispers soothingly in your ear. At some point, you realize he’s crying, too. He keeps kissing your face. You clutch at him, dragging him closer to you, needing him. He holds you. Kisses you. Loves you.

Your sister picks up his fallen bag. She doesn’t speak. She lets you stand there for as long as you need, and you need a long time.

 

You both sit in the back seat on the way back from the airport so you don’t have to stop holding onto his hand. He’s like an anchor to you. Just by existing, just by being where you are, he’s keeping you here, keeping you upright.

Your mother almost cries when she sees him, too. There’s just something perfectly wonderful and comforting about him. Everyone can see it, can feel it. Above everything, he’s just so good.

He hugs her when he greets her, tells her how sorry he is for her loss (and chokes on his tears as he does), then thanks her genuinely for her hospitality at letting him stay here. He makes a little small talk with the rest of the family. He’s like a light and everyone seems to gather to him, glowing with his illumination. He casts away some of the shadows.

When you see a gap in the conversations, you seize upon it and take his hand, dragging him up to your room. You insisted to your mother that he didn’t need an extra bed. Maybe it was selfish, but you really just want him to hold you and he can do that in your little twin-size bed as long as you squeeze in.

You lie down on the bed without speaking and he lies down with you, his forehead resting against yours, his hands gripping yours, his legs tangled around yours. He kisses you and you can’t tell if you’re crying this time from grief or from relief.

Perhaps both.

You probably stay that way for hours, but you can’t tell the difference between time anymore. You speak to each other sometimes, but mostly you just touch. The contact is more real and more right than anything that’s happened at all in the last week. He kisses you a lot. You’re glad he does.

 

Your dad is almost not surprised to see him at dinner. He leaves for work earlier than you were up this morning so couldn’t have known Jehan was coming, but something about the way he greets him, it’s like he expected this to happen. But your dad and your boyfriend get along fine and he doesn’t even seem to mind that you actually won’t let go of Jehan’s hand, not even so he can shake your father’s.

Jehan doesn’t seem to mind either. He even eats left-handed for you so you don’t have to let go of him during dinner. You think, once again, about how good and kind and perfect he is. How incredibly glad you are that he’s yours.

How much you really, truly love him.

 

You only fit in the bed together if you both lie on your sides, but he doesn’t seem bothered by it. You lie nose-to-nose, arms wrapped around each other, legs twisted. As he falls asleep, sometimes he presses little kisses into your face and neck. It takes you longer to settle down, but something about having him in between your arms, breathing deeply with sleep, his hair in your face. . .it’s comforting. It’s reassuring. He’s here. That’s enough.

You fall into a better sleep than you’ve had since you heard your grandmother was dying.

 

He looks really nice for the funeral. He’s wearing the suit you bought him when you took him to the opera for his birthday, and he’s even wearing a normal tie. He’s tied his hair back with a black velvet ribbon and you can’t help but pull him into your arms and kiss him when you see him. He brushes his thumbs over your cheekbones and sighs into your lips when you begin to pull away. You take his hand and it gives you the strength you need to leave the bedroom and face your family.

He cries at her funeral, even though he barely knew her. You cry too, and he’s there to hold your hand. The burial is worse, but he slips an arm around your waist and cuddles up to you and you’re okay. You’re going to be okay.

Your uncle — your mom’s older brother — is the first person to say anything at all against him. He takes you aside after you’ve all gone back to your parents’ house to speak privately to you and then tells you you’re “dishonoring your grandmother” by being here with your boyfriend. You wonder, for a minute, if this would hurt less if he’d been the kind of uncle who was always sort of a jerk. But you used to think he was cool, you used to think he was supportive.

You probably could have handled this better if your emotions hadn’t already been so raw. If he hadn’t been insulting the only person keeping you from screaming until your throat was torn and sore.

You start yelling at him. You don’t care that there are people around, that they can hear you, that you’re disrupting everyone. He’s being a giant douchebag and you’re not going to let him get away with this. But yelling at him makes him defensive and he starts fighting back. Now he’s calling Jehan (Jehan, but not you) a faggot and a fruit and he keeps calling him “your fag” like he’s your pet or you own him or something, and you have never been so ashamed of the singular possessive in your life.

It’s too much, you’re too angry, your breath is shallow and forced and you’re falling into stance to hit him right in his stupid, bigoted face — but then Jehan is suddenly there, at your side, looking only at you and not at your uncle, pulling at your arm and saying things like, “It’s okay,” even though this couldn’t be further from the realm of okay.

Your uncle says something else but you don’t hear him because you’ve focused in on your boyfriend’s face, on his comforting eyes asking you to come away.

He spins around to stare at your uncle, and says in a calm but authoritative voice, “I’m very sorry you feel that way, but we love each other.” His emotion breaks through as he continues, “I may not have known Maria very well or for very long, but from everything I’ve heard of her since I’ve been here, it sounds like she was an absolutely heroic person, and I can’t imagine a person like that would want her lovely, wonderful grandson to have to face her funeral without the person who loves him there to hold his hand.”

That’s all he says, and then he’s dragging you away, and this time you let him. He takes you all the way back to your bedroom before he lets go of you. You’re raging, fuming, and he’s shaking. He hates confrontation, particularly this, which was so public. But he hates injustice more. And he hates when you’re upset.

He’s just sitting on your bed, trembling, trying to pull himself together. You go and sit next to him, pull him into your arms to hold him. It’s the first time since he’s been here that you’ve had to comfort him instead of the other way around, and it feels like a kind of relief. He’s been so good to you, you desperately want to be good to him, too.

You kiss his hair as he turns his face into your shoulder.

“Thank you,” you breathe, because there’s nothing else you can say.

You feel his lips on your neck where he kisses you when he can’t express his own heart with words, then he adds, “I love you.”

You don’t leave the room again until dinner.

 

When you go downstairs, your uncle and his family are gone, and your mother won’t stop apologizing to your boyfriend like it’s somehow her fault her older brother turned out to be a horrible person. But Jehan is so, so good, and he hugs her again. He says it’s fine, everything is okay. She never believes you when you say things like that, but she believes him.

He keeps his hand on your knee through the meal and you don’t know if the contact is for you or for him. It doesn’t yet occur to you that he needs you exactly as much as you need him. That you could need each other the same.

 

You couldn’t be more relieved when you wake up and it’s time to go home. He’s already awake and has packed your stuff along with his own. As soon as he sees you’re up, he comes to you and kisses you despite your terrible morning breath. He smiles and whispers that you get to go home today. You smile too. Home.

He’s wonderful to your parents as you leave, and then he skips out first so you can say goodbye to them privately. Your mother is loathe to see you go but she knows you need to get back to school. Your dad doesn’t say much as you go. He was never really one for words anyway. They both tell you to thank Jehan. They both say how wonderful he is. You feel a kind of pride. Yes, he is wonderful.

He’s waiting for you out by the car. Your sister is driving you again. They’ve been chatting out here, he gets along with everyone. You hold his hand on the way to the airport and on the plane, he lifts up the armrest between you so you can cuddle him. He murmurs, “I wish I’d known her better,” before he falls asleep in your arms, and you kiss his hair because you love kissing his hair, ignoring the fact there are people all around you.

When you get home, he walks you to your room. Enjolras is out, and you feel kind of glad that he is. You don’t really want to face anyone just yet. Jehan actually asks you if you’d like him to leave you alone for a while after you flop down on your own bed and you almost laugh before you silently reach out your arms for him to fall into.

He ends up spending the night with you, not even going back to his home once. You can’t explain why waking up with his hair all over your face brings you so much joy.

 

He goes home in the morning because he doesn’t have any clean clothes. Enjolras is sitting at the tiny table in the kitchen when you both emerge from your room and doesn’t say anything except to greet you both. You suppose he’s used to this by now. Jehan kisses you before he leaves and then you turn to Enjolras.

“Are you all right?” he asks you first.

You shrug, then nod. “It’s hard,” you say simply. “But I’m all right.”

He nods back at you. Reaches out and grips your arm as he passes you. He’s saying he’s here for you, that’s how he communicates, and you’ve known him long enough to understand. You’re grateful.

The others, when you see them, try a little too hard to figure out how to relate to you. Some ask if you want to talk, others try to pretend nothing happened. It’s Grantaire and Bahorel who are your saviors, they just keep making jokes. Everyone is clearly a little relieved when you joke back.

Jehan holds your hand under the table.

 

It probably takes about a week for everyone to stop walking on eggshells around you. About a week before you feel like you don’t have to insist that Jehan sleep in your bed with you. But then the first night he doesn’t, you miss him so much you actually physically ache and end up wandering over to his building and waking him up by texting him so he’ll come down and let you in. You keep apologizing until he kisses your face and tells you he missed you too.

Grantaire rolls his eyes at the two of you holding hands at the kitchen counter when he comes out of his room in the morning.

“Morning, Courf,” he mumbles. Then he smirks and adds sarcastically, “What a surprise to see you here.”

Jehan flushes a little when you look at him.

“I may have been complaining about the lack of you last night,” he confesses begrudgingly.

Grantaire snorts. “He was moaning about not having anyone to hold and how the bear you gave him isn’t the same,” he tells you as he pours cereal into a bowl and then eats it dry with his hands.

Jehan is bright red at this point. You grin at him, then kiss him soundly (which makes Grantaire roll his eyes even harder). It finally occurs to you. He needs you too, to hold his hand when he’s sad, to fight for him when he’s angry, to be there for him when he’s lonely. You need him, and he needs you too.

It’s not like you can move in together right now. You’ve lived with Enjolras for a long time and Jehan has lived with Grantaire and it’s not like you can just swap roommates (although the idea of Grantaire and Enjolras living in the same apartment does rather amuse you). And you’re both still in school. But you know now. This is all you want, ever. You decide that living in two places will be just fine, so long as you never have to spend another night without him. Right there, in his kitchen, kissing him in front of your mutual friend, you decide this is it. It’s him.

He finally drops his toast since you won’t stop kissing him, reaching up to touch your face with his buttery fingers. Grantaire makes a noise halfway between a huff and a groan and leaves to go finish his dry cereal in his room. You don’t care.

You kiss your love, looking forward to a lifetime of this, of holding him at night, of his goodness and his beauty and his light. You’re sure, now. This is it.

You love him so much.


End file.
